Vera gave him a glance in which there was a trace of pride, but her heart beat with the pain of parting. His words were a model of what a farewell should be.
“We have gone to the bottom of the matter,” said Mark dully, “and I leave the decision in your hands.” He went to the other side of the arbour, keeping his eyes fixed upon her. “I am not deceiving you even now, in this decisive moment, when my head is giddy--I cannot. I do not promise you an unending love, because I do not believe in such a thing. I will not be your betrothed. But I love you more than anything else in the world. If, after all I have told you, you come to my arms, it means that you love me, that you are mine.”
She looked across at him with wide open eyes, and felt that her whole body was trembling. A doubt shot through her mind. Was he a Jesuit, or was the man who brought her into this dangerous dilemma in reality of unbending honour?
“Yours for ever?” she said in a low voice. If he said, “yes,” it would, she knew, be a bridge for the moment to help her over the abyss that divided them, but that afterwards she would be plunged into the abyss. She was afraid of him.
Mark was painfully agitated, but he answered in a subdued tone, “I do not know. I only know what I am doing now, and do not see even into the near future. Neither can you. Let us give love for love, and I remain here, quieter than the waters of the pool, humbler than grass. I will do what you will, and what do you ask more. Or,” he added suddenly, coming nearer, “we will leave this place altogether....”
In a lightning flash the wide world seemed to smile before her, as if the gates of Paradise were open. She threw herself in Mark’s arms and laid her hand on his shoulder. If she went away into the far distance with him, she thought, he could not tear himself from her, and once alone with her he must realise that life was only life in her presence.
“Will you decide!” he asked seriously. She said nothing, but bowed her head. “Or do you fear your Grandmother?”
The last words brought her to her senses, and she stepped back.
“If I do not decide,” she whispered, “it is only because I fear her.”
“She would let me go, and would give me her blessing, but she herself would die of grief. That is what I fear. To go away together,” she said dreamily, “and what then?” She looked up at him searchingly.